REVIEWED BY BARRY GARDNER:


NEAL BARRETT, JR. – Dead Dog Blues. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1994. Kensington, paperback, 1997.

   Barrett is the author of “nearly 30” (28? 29?) mostly science fiction/fantasy books including The Hereafter Gang, which if you haven’t read by now, shame on you. His first mystery, Pink Vodka Blues, got good ink and is soon to be a Whoopi Goldberg/Ted Danson movie. Would I lie to you?

   Jack Track (catchy, ain’t it?) is Town Marshal of tiny Pharaoh, Texas, returned there after a fourteen year absence during which bad and mysterious things happened to him. The book opens with a dead electric dog (who barks real loud) belonging to the town’s richest man, a real *sshole (in Jack’s opinion) who is pretty upset by the liberties taken with his dog, which was a Lab before it got dead and electrified.

   Other characters include Jack’s current amour, Cecily the Yogurt Queen, Earl Murphy, the self-styled “N*gger of Wall Street,” who hasn’t built his house yet and sleeps in an Aston Martin Lagonda, and cast of tens. Then man follows dog.

   The back cover calls Jack a private investigator and makes this sound like some sort of PI novel, but neither is true in the slightest. What it is, as usual with Barrett, is unclassifiable. Nobody does Bubba-talk like Barrett; nobody. If you don’t like the voice you’ll have a hard time liking the book.

   It’s mostly a straight story, though he can’t resist tossing in several off-the-wall touches and characters, and it’s funny and serious both. That’s a hard line to walk, but for me, at least, Barrett is one of the few who can walk it.

   Old Jack is an interesting, fairly realistic, and not altogether admirable character, and I’d like to see more of him. He’ll have to relocate, though — there aren’t enough people left in Pharaoh for another by the time this one’s over.

— Reprinted from Ah Sweet Mysteries #13, June 1994.


Editorial Comments:   Barry’s review of Pink Vodka Blues appears here. In the comments following that review is a list of some of Barrett’s other work, including his science fiction, and some information about the screenplay for the never produced movie based on the book. The asterisks in this review are mine, not Barry’s.